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It isn’t obvious, and she isn’t dramatic about it, but when you watch someone as closely and frequently as Steve does Peggy, you pick up on certain things. Things like the way she’ll give a little once more unto the breach sigh when she reaches into the cupboard for the box of Lipton or Tender Leaf, whichever tea bags are available at the local grocery, or the edge of truth to her jokes that she is surrounded by barbarians only interested in ridiculous baseball, with no one to appreciate with her the beautiful intricacies of cricket.
She’ll never ask for these things to be different, and would likely shrug it off if he offered - she’s lived through a war, after all, did too much of her growing up under rationing or terrible circumstance and never tried to grub for extra, tried to change things for the greater world, never herself. He figures that it’s a good thing she doesn’t have to ask, then, and a very good thing that they have friends who will help out.
Jarvis tells him where to get proper English tea, and which stores to travel to to find British and European chocolates, both of them knowing that Peggy has no taste for Hershey’s. He even earnestly gives over the name of his preferred importer, who can bring bulk orders in from overseas and from whom Jarvis blushingly admits purchasing the occasional treat from Budapest for Ana. (The gentleman has also, Jarvis mentions delicately, assisted with some very particular requests of Howard’s. Steve elects not to ask.)
Howard himself, despite his ever-growing workload, is only too happy to fiddle with their radio, doing something to increase the range so that they can listen to the news and sports and music programs in the familiar accents of the BBC presenters. “Just AM, I can only work a certain level of miracle,” he tells Steve, who refrains from telling him about internet and satellite radio.
From Angie, he receives regular updates on which shows are coming over with West End casts. These are usually accompanied by a cup of coffee, a pastry, and a rundown on her latest audition disasters. A couple of tickets plus a restaurant reservation makes a good date night - although he also discovers that he really doesn’t care for Gilbert and Sullivan.
Peggy has neither the time nor inclination to join one of the social groups for war brides which have popped up in the area, and she doesn’t consider herself one besides.
(“I wasn’t brought here tossed over your shoulder,” she reminded him testily the afternoon another shopkeeper had cooed over her accent as they’d browsed together, insisting that wasn’t she lucky to have met such a handsome soldier who would take her away from all that trouble Over There. “I chose to come and did so on the merit of my own work, which very luckily overlapped with yours.”
“So I didn’t sweep a wide-eyed British urchin off her feet with charming stories of American values, apple pie and streets paved with gold?” Steve shook his head. “Huh. I guess I’d remembered the whole thing differently.”)
But Steve has time on his hands and no problem dropping in on the meetings of the Crumpets and the English Roses and Queen Mary’s Girls and the Cosmopolitan Club; he does attend one gathering of the Transatlantic Brides and Parents Association too, but finds it too stuffy. The others, once they’re a bit more used to him and somewhat less suspicious, are only too happy to describe what they miss from home - Steve gets the sense that their husbands and new in-laws aren’t necessarily eager to hear their reminiscences, and he knows too well the feeling of keeping your memories inside yourself because to give others the reminder of what you’d lost would be too much of a burden.
Some of these things, the ladies assure him, no one could expect him to replicate - the smell of the place, for example, or the weather, no matter that Steve mostly remembers it being gray, or the sense of true, deep-rooted history as opposed to the hundred year old American version which only sweet Loretta Clarke even bothers to venture is good enough - but perhaps if he wanted to give a try for some others…
There are foods that their mothers made but which they never learned the recipes for (“When you could only get so much to make a meal of, no one wanted to let a little girl try her hand - what if it got burned, or mucked up?”) and couldn’t find the right ingredients for anyway. There is a short list of “proper” pubs and many more which none of the ladies will set foot in, sometimes for reasons of cleanliness but more often because the decor is trying too hard, or the clientele is the wrong sort of loud, or the bartender doesn’t draw a good pint. Ginny White even shares that she’s found a bakery which she prefers over the too-sweet American desserts - “although the place is...French,” she tells them, blushing as her voice drops so low that she practically mouths the last word; Steve stifles a chuckle, but a couple of the others shake their heads, Ellen Andrews actually saying, “Well, I never” aloud, before Loretta pipes up that, “I’d like to try it, they were our allies after all.”
So he goes home armed with the knowledge of how Boxing Day and Bonfire Night should be celebrated and exactly what a Yorkshire pudding is, if not an understanding of precisely how to make one, and decides to try his hand at fish and chips.
The general concept seems simple enough - he can identify both fish and potatoes, which, considering his cooking skills, was no guarantee - and for once most of his new friends had overall the same notion on how it should be prepared. And he’s even had it before, back in London when a late night strategy discussion with Peggy at headquarters had turned into him escorting her back to her rented room, swearing that it was only because his mother would have been ashamed of him otherwise - even then he’d known that she could take care of herself, just as he’d known that he’d keep making excuses to walk with her for as many nights as she’d let him.
A wondrous expression had crossed her face as they’d passed a small fish and chip shop, still open despite the hour, the cracked door allowing the street to fill with the scent. She had breathed deeply and dragged him inside. If he’s being honest, he doesn’t entirely remember what their meal tasted like, too caught up in the delight on her face, the way their hands had brushed against each other when she’d passed him the vinegar bottle, her satisfied sigh as they had finished, but he figures he’ll be able to tell if he’s doing it wrong.
He has the kitchen trash wrapped up and delivered to the alley outside and takeout from Antony’s already on the table five minutes before Peggy gets home (although it was a close thing, and he’d had to bring the food home at a much quicker clip than he usually allowed himself where the neighbors could see).
She doesn’t say anything at first, even as he can see her putting the pieces together: the scent of fish and oil lingering in the kitchen, the outline of a large bandage under his shirt sleeve because even his body can’t fully heal a scald mark that enormous in only an hour, his quiet picking at his food. Instead she twirls up her own portion of spaghetti as she answers his questions about her day, updating him on the latest bickering among her bureau chiefs and her concerns regarding a particularly slippery offender who seems to constantly be anticipating the agents’ next move.
Still, there’s a look on her face, a bit tender, a bit knowing, that look she’d given him when she’d realized that he always kissed or touched her scars - the bullet wounds on her shoulder, the marks on her abdomen and her back from the impalement - when they were in bed together, the look she directs his way every time he balks at splurging on a purchase, the one from when they’d first danced together and he’d been holding his breath, barely able to pay attention to the music as he tried to avoid her toes. The look that says that she sees all that he is, the silly and sentimental, sometimes overcome and simply trying, and it all only makes him dearer to her.
And she sets down her fork and says, quite plainly, “Steve. I’m not going anywhere.”
His jaw shifts to the side, holding back his silence more than any words. He swallows, turns his gaze away, only to find it redirected by Peggy’s hand on his cheek.
“My darling,” she says with such softness, even as she could so easily remind him that he was the one who left.
“I just wanted—” He takes in a breath. “I just wanted to make sure you had the things you were comfortable with, the things that you might miss. I wanted—I want our life to be a home for you.”
For a moment she only sits there, head tilted, watching him. Then she says, “You are so good to me, and I love you so very much for it. And I won’t pretend that there aren’t things that I miss, but they truly are only that - things. With my friends here, the people I love, with you here, how could I be anything other than home?”
He thinks about the apartment he’d had in Brooklyn, a decade ago and so many decades from now, the loneliness and disconnection which had nearly overwhelmed him there - not only because the streets and surroundings had changed into something unrecognizable to him but because his people were gone, because he was gone from them. He thinks of his friends, who he won’t see again for years if ever, and knows that no souvenirs could make up for them in his heart.
“I like so much of what you’ve done,” Peggy tells him. “I appreciate it. But I don’t want you to keep on because you think I couldn’t stand to stay without it all. And besides—” In the space of her pause, he thinks she sees her mouth tighten nervously. “If I’m going to be the mother of an American citizen in another seven months or so, I should likely begin adopting at least something from here. Not the chocolate, I’m afraid to say. Truly, Steve, I don’t know how—”
It’s a good thing he’s heard her complaints about Hershey’s before, because his mouth covers hers and cuts off her tirade before it’s truly begun.
Steve paints a mural for the baby’s room: Big Ben and Tower Bridge and St. Paul’s, the Empire State and the Brooklyn Bridge and the New York Public Library, with Patience and Fortitude flanking the crib. And depicted throughout are the people who will love this child into its life: Bucky and his family, Jarvis and Ana, the Commandos, Angie, Howard (even knowing the times he’ll let them down), and Steve and Peggy, shoulder to shoulder, always.